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> Possibly, yes. What is your "yes" referring to? That was not a yes-no answer. > An argument can be made that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan caused less o

> Possibly, yes. What is your "yes" referring to? That was not a yes-no answer. > An argument can be made that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan caused less overall loss of life than an invasion or prolonged conflict (even if heavily weighted to one side). Not only completely weighted to one side, but consisting in its vast majority of civilians. > There's also the question of how many large conflicts were prevented since the time the creation of atomic weapons because it was seen as too costly, or one side was vastly superior because of them. There has been no "war to end all wars", in spite of hopeful predictions. We haven't had WW3, but "one side being vastly superior" has not prevented the US from being engaged near constantly in various wars since after WW2. It is indeed a very complex topic, but questioning the ethics of those involved in the development of atomic weapons, especially given all we know about the way it was done, is a completely reasonable stance.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
From 100 Decisive Battles: "When Okinawa was finally declared secure, the cost had been horrific. Some 150,000 Okinawans died, approximately one-third the island's population. An additional 10,000 Koreans, used by the Japanese military as slave labor, died as well. Of the 119,000 or so Japanese soldiers, as many as 112,000 were killed in the battle or forever sealed inside a collapsed cave or bunker. Aside from the human cost, most of the physical aspects of Okinawan culture were razed. Few buildings survived the 3 months fighting. Collectively, the defenders lost more dead than the Japanese suffered in the two atomic bombings combined. The United States lost 13,000 dead: almost 8,000 on the island and the remainder at sea; another 32,000 were wounded. The loss of life on both sides, particularly among the Japanese civilians, caused immense worry in Washington. New President Harry Truman was looking at the plans for a proposed assault on the Japanese main islands, and the casualty projections were unacceptable. Projections numbered the potential casualties from 100,000 in the first 30 days to as many as 1 million attackers, and the death count for the Japanese civilians would be impossible to calculate. If they resisted as strongly as did the citizens of Okinawa -- and the inhabitants of the home islands would be even more dedicated to defending their homeland -- Japan would become a wasteland. It was already looking like one in many areas. The U.S. bombing campaign, in place since the previous September, was burning out huge areas of Japanese cities. How much longer the Japanese could have held out in the face of the fire bombing is a matter of much dispute; some project that, had the incendiary raids continued until November, the Japanese would have been thrown back to an almost Stone Age existence. The problem was this: no one in the west knew exactly what was happening in Japan. The devastation could be estimated, but the resistance could not. Thus, with the casualties of the Okinawa battle fresh in his mind, when Truman learned of the successful testing of an atomic bomb, he ordered its use. This is a decision debated since 6 August 1945, the date of the bombing of Hiroshima, and even before. Just what was known of Japanese decision-making processes before that date is also argued to this day. Was the Japanese government in the process of formulating a peace offer, in spite of the demand for unconditional surrender the Allies had decided upon in February 1943? If they were doing so, did anyone in the west know about it? Who knew what, when they knew it, and what effect that knowledge had or may have had on Truman's decision making is a matter of much dispute. Whatever the political ramifications of the atomic bomb on the immediate and postwar world, Truman's decision was certainly based in no small part on the nature of the fighting on Okinawa. Truman wrote just after his decision, "We'll end the war sooner now. And think of the kids who wont be killed." Note that a persuasive counter-argument was posted by Floegipoky (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11751090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11751090) "The invasion of Okinawa is not at all comparable to a potential invasion of Japan. I won't address your main point. I'm posting to correct a grave misunderstanding about the relationship between Okinawa and Japan during this period. Okinawa is a distinct cultural entity, and the island was viewed by Japan as occupied territory. Japanese forces slaughtered Okinawans, going so far as to use them as human shields. Some Okinawans were ordered to kill themselves and their families to avoid the horrific fate that the Japanese promised at the hands of American troops. Others, including schoolchildren, were pressed into front-line service or sent on suicide missions. Others were simply murdered, whether for their food or supplies, out of paranoia to root out "spies" (those who made the grave mistake of speaking in Okinawan within earshot), or for entertainment. I'm not saying Americans didn't kill Okinawans too. What I'm saying is that the Japanese could not have cared less about the survival of Okinawa: the land, culture, or people. While the Japanese were certainly willing to use civilians for tactical or strategic gain, one cannot assume that their military forces would have raped and pillaged their own populace in the same manner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#Civilian_losses.2C_suicides_and_atrocities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#Civilian_los... " Nonetheless, you can see how a reasonable person could take the stance that developing the bomb was ethical. Being compared to mass murderers and such is just breathless posturing.
- kbenson 9y ago
  > Note that a persuasive counter-argument was posted by Floegipoky It's worth mentioning that this is a useful rebuttal for the question of whether the reasons use of the bomb were valid, they don't matter for the justifications for the development of the bomb and whether the people involved thought it was ethical, because that's resolves purely around what they believed, whether based on correct information or not. In the same way I can defend myself when I think I'm under attack and hurt a friend that was really just trying to scare me, I'm not acting unethically, I'm acting ethically but under bad information.
- vkou 9y ago
  The Japanese were ready and willing to surrender before the bombs dropped - and they knew the war was lost as soon as the Soviet Union betrayed its neutrality treaty. What they were not ready for, was an unconditional surrender. (And, in the end, they surrendered conditionally! The entire sticking point turned out to be moot.) Truman and his advisers have deliberately pushed a false dichotomy of "Drop the bomb - and then drop a second bomb", versus "Invade the Home Islands." [1] The reality was that there was a third option available to the US - a conditional Japanese surrender. It chose to commit a war crime for political, not humanitarian reasons - and it never seriously entertained the alternative. Once it had the bomb - the debate was not whether it was going to use it, but where. [1] http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/08/03/were-there-alternatives-to-the-atomic-bombings/ http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/08/03/were-there-alterna... Some choice snippets: "At the very least, waiting more than three days after Hiroshima might have been humane. Three days was barely enough time for the Japanese high command to verify that the weapon used was a nuclear bomb, much less assess its impact and make strategic sense of it. Doing so may have avoided the need for the second bombing run altogether." "Two months before Hiroshima, scientists at the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory, one of the key Manhattan Project facilities, authored a report arguing that the first use of an atomic bomb should not be on an inhabited city" "But the initial target for the bomb, discussed in 1943 (long before it was ready) was the island of Truk (now called Chuuk), an ostensibly purely military target, the Japanese equivalent of Pearl Harbor." "And, in fact, we do now know that the Soviet invasion may have weighed as heavily on the Japanese high command as did the atomic bombings, if not more so. So why didn’t Truman wait? The official reason given after the fact was that any delay whatsoever would be interpreted as wasting time, and American lives, once the atomic bomb was available. But it may also have been because Truman, and especially his Secretary of State, Byrnes, may have hoped that the war might have ended before the Soviets had entered."
kbenson 9y ago
> What is your "yes" referring to? That was not a yes-no answer. I misread it as "Would anyone" instead of "Why would anyone". > Not only completely weighted to one side, but consisting in its vast majority of civilians. That's nothing new with atomic weapons. There was massive firebombing of Japanese cities prior to the nuclear attack. From January 1944 until August 1945, the U.S. dropped 157,000 tons of bombs on Japanese cities, according to the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. It estimated that 333,000 people were killed, including the 80,000 killed in the Aug. 6 Hiroshima atomic bomb attack and 40,000 in Nagasaki three days later.[1] That puts the loss of life from the atomic attacks at just over a third of the total loss of life from bombing. The question is how long would the Japanese have decided to prolong the war before losing (or winning, given some unforeseen circumstance) and would more or less people have died before that point. A show of overwhelming force, with the promise of more to come, can go a long way towards stopping hostilities very quickly. > There has been no "war to end all wars", in spite of hopeful predictions. We haven't had WW3, but "one side being vastly superior" has not prevented the US from being engaged near constantly in various wars since after WW2. Total loss of life in WW1 is estimated to be around 18 million people (11 million military, 7 million civilian).[2] Total loss of life in WW2 is estimated to be between 50 million and 80 million.[3] Any conflict since WW2 hsa been miniscule in comparison. Total casualties in Vietnam are estimated to be below 1.5 million over almost an entire decade.[4] I would say that we are very lucky there hasn't been a WW3. It likely would have casualties in the hundreds of millions. > It is indeed a very complex topic, but questioning the ethics of those involved in the development of atomic weapons, especially given all we know about the way it was done, is a completely reasonable stance. I didn't take the original statement as much of a "question" of ethics, as an assumption that none of them could be expected to act ethically ("why would anyone expect them to behave 'ethically'" is the specific wording) because of the nature of the work. I think it's likely that some of them thought they were working for the greater good, and we cannot assume a failure of ethics in all cases. 1: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/10/national/deadly-wwii-u-s-firebombing-raids-on-japanese-cities-largely-ignored/ http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/10/national/deadly-... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties
bigfudge 9y ago
Given the most of the troops were conscripts, does this actually make much difference? When I read the WW1 war poets I find it hard to conclude that their deaths were any more justifiable than civilians who may have voted for or supported the governments directing the war efforts.
- averagewall 9y ago
  Yes. It's silly to distinguish civilian from military deaths without also distinguishing volunteer soldiers from effectively slaves. Civilians too are often largely responsible for wars their countries fight. Especially if they work directly for the war effort manufacturing arms or less directly supporting those who do. I suppose the further removed, the less blame, but also the greater numbers of slightly complicit people.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

From 100 Decisive Battles: "When Okinawa was finally declared secure, the cost had been horrific. Some 150,000 Okinawans died, approximately one-third the island's population. An additional 10,000 Koreans, used by the Japanese military as slave labor, died as well. Of the 119,000 or so Japanese soldiers, as many as 112,000 were killed in the battle or forever sealed inside a collapsed cave or bunker. Aside from the human cost, most of the physical aspects of Okinawan culture were razed. Few buildings survived the 3 months fighting. Collectively, the defenders lost more dead than the Japanese suffered in the two atomic bombings combined. The United States lost 13,000 dead: almost 8,000 on the island and the remainder at sea; another 32,000 were wounded. The loss of life on both sides, particularly among the Japanese civilians, caused immense worry in Washington. New President Harry Truman was looking at the plans for a proposed assault on the Japanese main islands, and the casualty projections were unacceptable. Projections numbered the potential casualties from 100,000 in the first 30 days to as many as 1 million attackers, and the death count for the Japanese civilians would be impossible to calculate. If they resisted as strongly as did the citizens of Okinawa -- and the inhabitants of the home islands would be even more dedicated to defending their homeland -- Japan would become a wasteland. It was already looking like one in many areas. The U.S. bombing campaign, in place since the previous September, was burning out huge areas of Japanese cities. How much longer the Japanese could have held out in the face of the fire bombing is a matter of much dispute; some project that, had the incendiary raids continued until November, the Japanese would have been thrown back to an almost Stone Age existence. The problem was this: no one in the west knew exactly what was happening in Japan. The devastation could be estimated, but the resistance could not. Thus, with the casualties of the Okinawa battle fresh in his mind, when Truman learned of the successful testing of an atomic bomb, he ordered its use. This is a decision debated since 6 August 1945, the date of the bombing of Hiroshima, and even before. Just what was known of Japanese decision-making processes before that date is also argued to this day. Was the Japanese government in the process of formulating a peace offer, in spite of the demand for unconditional surrender the Allies had decided upon in February 1943? If they were doing so, did anyone in the west know about it? Who knew what, when they knew it, and what effect that knowledge had or may have had on Truman's decision making is a matter of much dispute. Whatever the political ramifications of the atomic bomb on the immediate and postwar world, Truman's decision was certainly based in no small part on the nature of the fighting on Okinawa. Truman wrote just after his decision, "We'll end the war sooner now. And think of the kids who wont be killed." Note that a persuasive counter-argument was posted by Floegipoky (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11751090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11751090) "The invasion of Okinawa is not at all comparable to a potential invasion of Japan. I won't address your main point. I'm posting to correct a grave misunderstanding about the relationship between Okinawa and Japan during this period. Okinawa is a distinct cultural entity, and the island was viewed by Japan as occupied territory. Japanese forces slaughtered Okinawans, going so far as to use them as human shields. Some Okinawans were ordered to kill themselves and their families to avoid the horrific fate that the Japanese promised at the hands of American troops. Others, including schoolchildren, were pressed into front-line service or sent on suicide missions. Others were simply murdered, whether for their food or supplies, out of paranoia to root out "spies" (those who made the grave mistake of speaking in Okinawan within earshot), or for entertainment. I'm not saying Americans didn't kill Okinawans too. What I'm saying is that the Japanese could not have cared less about the survival of Okinawa: the land, culture, or people. While the Japanese were certainly willing to use civilians for tactical or strategic gain, one cannot assume that their military forces would have raped and pillaged their own populace in the same manner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#Civilian_losses.2C_suicides_and_atrocities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#Civilian_los... " Nonetheless, you can see how a reasonable person could take the stance that developing the bomb was ethical. Being compared to mass murderers and such is just breathless posturing.

kbenson 9y ago
> Note that a persuasive counter-argument was posted by Floegipoky It's worth mentioning that this is a useful rebuttal for the question of whether the reasons use of the bomb were valid, they don't matter for the justifications for the development of the bomb and whether the people involved thought it was ethical, because that's resolves purely around what they believed, whether based on correct information or not. In the same way I can defend myself when I think I'm under attack and hurt a friend that was really just trying to scare me, I'm not acting unethically, I'm acting ethically but under bad information.
vkou 9y ago
The Japanese were ready and willing to surrender before the bombs dropped - and they knew the war was lost as soon as the Soviet Union betrayed its neutrality treaty. What they were not ready for, was an unconditional surrender. (And, in the end, they surrendered conditionally! The entire sticking point turned out to be moot.) Truman and his advisers have deliberately pushed a false dichotomy of "Drop the bomb - and then drop a second bomb", versus "Invade the Home Islands." [1] The reality was that there was a third option available to the US - a conditional Japanese surrender. It chose to commit a war crime for political, not humanitarian reasons - and it never seriously entertained the alternative. Once it had the bomb - the debate was not whether it was going to use it, but where. [1] http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/08/03/were-there-alternatives-to-the-atomic-bombings/ http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/08/03/were-there-alterna... Some choice snippets: "At the very least, waiting more than three days after Hiroshima might have been humane. Three days was barely enough time for the Japanese high command to verify that the weapon used was a nuclear bomb, much less assess its impact and make strategic sense of it. Doing so may have avoided the need for the second bombing run altogether." "Two months before Hiroshima, scientists at the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory, one of the key Manhattan Project facilities, authored a report arguing that the first use of an atomic bomb should not be on an inhabited city" "But the initial target for the bomb, discussed in 1943 (long before it was ready) was the island of Truk (now called Chuuk), an ostensibly purely military target, the Japanese equivalent of Pearl Harbor." "And, in fact, we do now know that the Soviet invasion may have weighed as heavily on the Japanese high command as did the atomic bombings, if not more so. So why didn’t Truman wait? The official reason given after the fact was that any delay whatsoever would be interpreted as wasting time, and American lives, once the atomic bomb was available. But it may also have been because Truman, and especially his Secretary of State, Byrnes, may have hoped that the war might have ended before the Soviets had entered."

kbenson 9y ago

> What is your "yes" referring to? That was not a yes-no answer. I misread it as "Would anyone" instead of "Why would anyone". > Not only completely weighted to one side, but consisting in its vast majority of civilians. That's nothing new with atomic weapons. There was massive firebombing of Japanese cities prior to the nuclear attack. From January 1944 until August 1945, the U.S. dropped 157,000 tons of bombs on Japanese cities, according to the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey. It estimated that 333,000 people were killed, including the 80,000 killed in the Aug. 6 Hiroshima atomic bomb attack and 40,000 in Nagasaki three days later.[1] That puts the loss of life from the atomic attacks at just over a third of the total loss of life from bombing. The question is how long would the Japanese have decided to prolong the war before losing (or winning, given some unforeseen circumstance) and would more or less people have died before that point. A show of overwhelming force, with the promise of more to come, can go a long way towards stopping hostilities very quickly. > There has been no "war to end all wars", in spite of hopeful predictions. We haven't had WW3, but "one side being vastly superior" has not prevented the US from being engaged near constantly in various wars since after WW2. Total loss of life in WW1 is estimated to be around 18 million people (11 million military, 7 million civilian).[2] Total loss of life in WW2 is estimated to be between 50 million and 80 million.[3] Any conflict since WW2 hsa been miniscule in comparison. Total casualties in Vietnam are estimated to be below 1.5 million over almost an entire decade.[4] I would say that we are very lucky there hasn't been a WW3. It likely would have casualties in the hundreds of millions. > It is indeed a very complex topic, but questioning the ethics of those involved in the development of atomic weapons, especially given all we know about the way it was done, is a completely reasonable stance. I didn't take the original statement as much of a "question" of ethics, as an assumption that none of them could be expected to act ethically ("why would anyone expect them to behave 'ethically'" is the specific wording) because of the nature of the work. I think it's likely that some of them thought they were working for the greater good, and we cannot assume a failure of ethics in all cases. 1: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/10/national/deadly-wwii-u-s-firebombing-raids-on-japanese-cities-largely-ignored/ http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/10/national/deadly-... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties

bigfudge 9y ago

Given the most of the troops were conscripts, does this actually make much difference? When I read the WW1 war poets I find it hard to conclude that their deaths were any more justifiable than civilians who may have voted for or supported the governments directing the war efforts.

averagewall 9y ago
Yes. It's silly to distinguish civilian from military deaths without also distinguishing volunteer soldiers from effectively slaves. Civilians too are often largely responsible for wars their countries fight. Especially if they work directly for the war effort manufacturing arms or less directly supporting those who do. I suppose the further removed, the less blame, but also the greater numbers of slightly complicit people.